Camera Labs

I'm very amature at photo editing but I do want something that is going to give me some tools and editing power. I want to start taking more pictures in raw format for editing. Is CS4 overkill, would lightroom be enough? Or are there other products that I havn't mentioned I should consider? Does CS4 support raw format? Sorry for so many questions, like I said I'm novice when it comes to this kind of software and what I really need. Thank you for your opinions!

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Nikon D90 18-105, 35mm f1.8, Nikon 70-300mm
Nikon SB-600
Panasonic FZ28
Canon SD750
My Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/37592444@N03/

Both Lightroom and CS4 support RAW. If you don't know what you want or need yet, you might consider the lower cost option too, Photoshop Elements.

All the above can be downloaded as a time limited trial version from Adobe so you can try them out.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

Thanks for the reply. Does elements have descent editing tools? Overlaying graphics, such as shadows and such is something I may want to do as well as viginetting, will Elements do that?

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Nikon D90 18-105, 35mm f1.8, Nikon 70-300mm
Nikon SB-600
Panasonic FZ28
Canon SD750
My Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/37592444@N03/

Elements has the more basic features from the Photoshop family. I suggest you give it a try. Then again, CS4 will get you pretty much everything, but you are paying for it.

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Canon DSLRs: 7D, 5D2, 1D, 600D, 450D full spectrum, 300D IR mod
Lenses: EF 35/2, 50/1.8, 85/1.8, 135/2+SF, 28-80 V, 70-300L, 100-400L, TS-E 24/3.5L, MP-E 65, EF-S 15-85 IS
3rd party: Zeiss 2/50 makro, Samyang 8mm fisheye, Sigma 150 macro, 120-300 f/2.8 OS, Celestron 1325/13
Tinies: Sony HX9V.

When I started with photography a little over a year ago I tried out all kinds of editing software as trial versions. I tried Lightroom 2; Phase One, Capture one; Nikon Capture NX2; Photoshop Elements 7 and maybe a few more.

I loved the speed of editing in Lightroom 2 and bought that first. It does have its limits as it can't correct barrel distortion or stitch panoramas or such, but I wasn't too bothered by that. (It can correct vignetting, chromatic aberration and reduce ISO-noise.)

A few weeks ago I also bought Elements 8 to allow me to stitch a panorama and correct barrel distortion after I edit a picture in Lightroom. It makes a good compliment.

I'm also looking into Nik Software Plugins for Lightroom to make Lightroom more powerful, but that's something for the longer term as it's as expensive as Lighroom itself.

All in all I prefer Lightroom as my main editor and enjoy the features of Elements to compliment it. It can also be the other way around for a photographer who doesn't shoot exclusively in raw. Elements is cheaper and still allows raw processing.
The best thing is to use the trial versions and try out what kind of editing you prefer to do.

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Canon 7D | EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS

You can try the beta version of Lightroom 3 for free till next April: http://labs.adobe.com/
Derek

www.gimp.org it free